Origins
by ACleverName
Summary: The Persian was old when he spoke to Leroux and may have gotten a few facts about the TrapDoor Lover muddled, for example his birthplace, his father's profession. Here are the details reworked for posterity. A threepart story from the POV of Erik's fath
1. Chapter 1

Origins

A story of the Phantom of the Opera

i. Bringing to Birth

"We summoned not the Silent Guest,

And no man spake his name;

By lips unseen our Cup was pressed,

And mid the merry song and jest,

The Uninvited came."

--James Jeffrey Hoche

She was in no way prepared to give birth.

Physically there was nothing wrong with my wife. The physician I had brought in agreed, but it was her spirit and emotional state that complicated matters. She was seventeen and though there were younger mothers made, there had been none made in quite the circumstances as Marthe. This was all of my own doing, and I blamed no one so much as myself.

We met at an informal gathering in Grenoble; a tedious coming-out party, perhaps an amateur theatrical performance, I can scarcely recall. She told me of herself as she sipped on sugared wine on a very warm summer evening, but her origins I was scarcely thinking of. To me, then, what counted was beauty, and Marthe was very beautiful. Excellent skin and a fine, thin waist. The way she moved her hands expressively was unmatched, and this I could say because I was in those days—forgive my vulgarity—a great admirer of women. Marthe was neither the first nor the last whose charms inflamed me and whose attentions I sought. In Grenoble where I ran a chestnut-hulling factory, desire was easily fulfilled for every manner of female company.

I did not then realize her youth—some twelve years my junior—and though she had not impressed me with any qualities other than her beauty, to say I was besotted with her this very first meeting was accurate. Her friends quickly swept her away into the crowd, preventing me from speaking to her more profoundly, and inflaming my desire. A few evenings later we attended another function, and I escorted her home in my carriage. God help me, things were done that night that that did irreparable, unforeseen damage. I thought her coy, not inexperienced. Like the others I had seduced, I thought her cognizant and capable of the measures required to temper such flames of passion.

I did not much expect to see her again after that, certainly not intimately. My passions had been sated, and she was, she told me, to return with her parents to their summer home, remote and high in the mountains. Surprise greeted me some three weeks later when I received a letter from Marthe. Although I had enjoyed many women's intimacy before her, she was the first to send such a letter. What she said, of course, was that she was a practicing Catholic, had been a virgin until that night, and that she was now undoubtedly carrying a child. Her parents demanded that I marry her.

I realized that my own religious teachings, so long dormant, dictated that I must, for reasons of morality and duty, marry Marthe as her parents had insisted. I looked to the arrangement neither with bitterness nor enthusiasm: I had been in thrall too long to my own bestial passions, and the time for retribution, a little earlier than expected, had arrived.

Marthe's parents could hardly have been pleased to find their future son-in-law a Protestant, English on his mother's side. "You will convert, of course," her father, M. Descloitres, had said firmly. (Where Marthe had received her engaging plumpness, I could hardly tell; her parents were thin and reedy like me and therefore their commands were less than threatening.) Outwardly, I did convert, and we were married with all the Catholic trappings. I agreed to their other conditions as well, that we would live out of the city, out of temptation's reach.

This I did willingly, not out of any great love of Marthe, but the certainty that this was the situation I had inherited. If it were not too unchristian to say, I wonder if my wife's parents had not allowed her to be led into such a situation, for I quickly found that, even giving into account her youth, she was more foolish and flighty-headed than most. She had no skills of which to speak except a common interest in embroidery; she could not manage a household with any effectuality, and her mind often wandered. It was perhaps unreasonable for all parties involved to have thought our marriage would be a success, but we managed. That she was often bored at home I was certain; that she took to strange habits is undeniable. Isolated from the delights of town with only my work and my wife to command my attention, I did my best to make her happy. I was faithful to her, at least that much could be said.

My one condition upon the marriage was that we would not live with my wife's parents. I would not concede to have their withering influence overhanging us, especially if we were to raise our child. For a time, I kept them at bay.

I had known next to nothing of Marthe's personal habits and likes when I stood at the altar next to her. I soon found we shared a surprising common interest. My wife was fond of music and, above all, the theatre. I myself had spent my formative youth as an aficionado of opera growing up in Paris. I purchased a cottage piano and, though she never played well, it was a genuine delight to come home in the evenings and hear her playing. We went to the theatre and to concerts as often as we could.

Though the doctor I had summoned from Lyon cautioned against it, I gave in to Marthe's insistent pleading to see a new Swedish play, _Gustave,_ some three weeks before the predicted date of birth. Her parents would not have allowed her to be exposed to such excitement in her confinement, and if I had not been so weak I would not have gone to the trouble of it.

The spring air must have brought on labor, not the play, which was greatly uninteresting. But as the doctor helped me return Marthe to her confinement bed, I noticed, alarmed, that, though her young body was hale, her mind was turning in directions that were hardly appropriate for a woman about to give birth. She was recounting as fact tales she must have read in a romance, and was referring to future events she could not possibly know about. She was speaking of the blighted night of this child's conception, in no uncertain terms, when the doctor blushed and said, "She is, sir, under great duress."

I had never attended a birth before, but her speech made me greatly uneasy. It did not seem natural. Labor was long but uncomplicated. It was fraught with tension, however, as my wife was nearly hysterical. Her maid had full charge of controlling her as the doctor brought my child out to me. He looked grave and disappointed.

"I'm afraid, M. Lucas, that the child is dead." I looked at the grayish bundle in his arms.

"Oh," I said. I cannot say what I felt at that moment. The doctor was looking down at the infant in something approaching horror. I looked over his shoulder. "Dear God . . . it's deformed," I said, unable to disguise the disgust in my voice. Another might have called it a demon child: its thin limp body was translucent with veins, its face was hardly a face at all—its eyelids were small and unable to disguise the cavernous holes of its eyes, its skeletal, flaking skin, lack of nose and near lack of lips. I was glad it was dead—it looked dead! I was not Catholic and I was not superstitious, and my own father a doctor and scientist of the Enlightened age.

"We shall have to tell my wife," I mused. "But not now, the state that she's in—"

We were both startled as the thing—the stillborn child—moved its malformed limbs lurchingly and gave a loud cry. I felt my color draining. It wasn't dead. My child, this hideous thing, was not dead. The doctor and I looked at each other helplessly.

"It—it—it's—" I was going to say that it wasn't dead after all, but the redundancy of the remark was exceeded only by the sickening fear in my voice. The child howled and moved in the doctor's arms. I swallowed. "I—"

"My son! Robert, bring me my son!" I felt my arms go numb with pins and needles. Marthe was asking for her child. She had heard him cry. The healthy boy she was no doubt expecting contrasted so tellingly with the twisted thing before me, I could not . . .

"Robert!" She was angry now, I could hear her arguing with the maid. "My baby—where is my baby?"

I looked at the doctor. "It is—it is a boy?"

He dutifully moved aside the swaddling clothes and was searching for such a long time that I began to wonder. "Yes," he said firmly. "You have a son."

My revulsion was inhuman, that such a thing should be called my son. Overwhelming hatred poured from my depths to curse this ugly abomination. This, then, was my punishment, my Divine judgment. My honorable conduct in marriage had not been enough to obliterate the stain of my sin. This was the product of it, as ugly as I could have ever imagined it.

"She has a right to know." It was the doctor's voice jarring me to the reality of the bawling baby. "Forgive me, sir, but you cannot hide this from your wife." Privately I thought I could hide it, and hide it permanently, but the doctor's look was dark and unforgiving.

"You carry him," I said, opening the doors to my wife's confinement chamber. She was still doing battle with the maid, fighting her as best she could through her exhaustion and hysteria.

"Yes, bring me my son," she sobbed with such an outpouring of happiness and relief I wondered if this was feeling of one's heart breaking. The doctor walked slowly the length of the bed, I following, while my wife pitifully opened her arms to receive this dried-up cadaver—it still cried loudly. The detached part of me watching the scene was genuinely curious as to how my wife might receive our deformed offspring.

"Your son, Madame," said the doctor, lowering the howling bundle and trembling, despite himself.

Marthe looked, and for a moment she was very still. Then she was very calmly angry. "Why do you bring me dead things, Doctor?" she asked. "What is this appalling dead thing? I want to see my son, not to be made sick." She pushed the bundle away irritatedly, bringing her hand to her mouth to ward off vomiting. "I'll positively be made sick!" The maid must have caught a glimpse because she ran from the room, crossing herself.

The doctor looked pale. He moved the child from my wife's bedside, then turned to me helplessly. Before I could say something, Marthe was moaning and twisting about as though she would faint. "Here, take him," he said, handing me my repulsive burden. If I had any idea of dropping him, instinct resisted it. The doctor rushed to my wife; I stood, numb. "Take him to his cradle," demanded the doctor, "and bring her some smelling salts! Quickly!"

I left my as-yet-unnamed son in the cold, dark nursery without any compunction and fetched the smelling salts. As she recovered, my wife said, "Robert, I just had a horrible dream! That our baby was exceedingly ugly—deformed, even." I stood very still, though her hand sought mine. I stiffened, expecting my wife now to contract madness so severe it made everything before seem trifling. Then I realized this was the only defense she had, the only way she could understand this affliction.

The doctor was gathering his instruments. "You had better name him," he said simply. The man, for whatever reason, wished to ensure our abominable son lasted out the day. "I can arrange, if it is your wish, for a priest who will ask no questions."

I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling very old. "Marthe, my dear?"

"Yes? You know, Robert, that I am frightfully exhausted!"

"Yes, I know. What would you like to name the baby?"

"Erik," she said.

"Why Erik?"

Her voice was dreamy. "The play, don't you remember?"

I would just as soon name our son something foreign. I bid her good night after this, seeing the doctor to the door. The man was agitated beyond belief, and I offered him brandy. He refused, on the point of saying something to me, but could not get it out. To this day I don't know if he was trying to tell me to kill Erik or pleading with me to spare his life.

It was some time later that I realized Erik was still in the nursery alone. My wife safely put to bed and none of the servants aware of his existence save the maid, I had forgotten him. The brandy that the doctor had refused I soon poured for myself, and the bottle I took with me to the nursery.

Erik was still crying, though not as lustily, making the cradle rock back and forth with the force of his thrashings. I stared at him for awhile, wondering how a human being could be quite so ugly. I stood up over the cradle, studying the cavernous depths around his eyes, the cracked yellow ulcerated skin. I reached down to touch him.

To smother him in his bedclothes would now be so easy—and imminently reasonable. I would only be depriving him of a life filled with hardship and pain. Surely it was service to him, and to his mother, who could not even acknowledge his existence! I covered the baby's mouth with the cloth and felt him fighting fiercely for air. I waited for the moment for him to cease his struggles—the only ones who had yet seen him were the doctor, my wife, the maid and me. Who would be there to deny me if I said my child had died his first night? He was sickly-looking and as yet unfed. I kept the cloth covering his nose and mouth.

I held it there, oh, so long I held it. Then . . . something in me relented. I could not kill my own son! Trembling, I lifted the cloth away as Erik chokingly sucked in air. I could _not_—not to save him pain, nor anyone else the profound trouble his life would bring. He was my sin—my burden. He was God's punishment to me—and I must bear him as best I could.

No doubt weakened by his near-death experience, Erik had stopped crying and was whimpering in a defeated, sulky way. I tried not to look at his face as I lifted him into my arms. I held him for a few moments, coldly, thinking of the joy new fathers were supposed to feel, holding their sons. Strangely, the child fell asleep in my arms. I settled him back into his cradle, made note to get milk for him when he woke—it would have to be _brébis, _not his mother's—and sat down with the brandy for a long night of planning.

He was confined to my care, and I must be both father and teacher to him. I had long been considering giving over the foremanship of my factory to my secretary, a man a bit older than myself but steady and dependable. If he would run the day-to-day logistics, I could still make enough to keep our moderate lifestyle. I could leave the house but rarely. We were isolated enough that callers were few. I would inform my wife's parents that the baby had died. I would ensure above all else that they did not learn of Erik's existence. The effects could be disastrous.

And how to manage Marthe's revulsion for her child? For a few days I kept Erik hidden in the nursery. I warned the servants, on pain of dismissal, not to tell my wife of his existence. She was recovering slowly in her bedchamber and had turned to embroidery to fill her time, as I had predicted. One morning I came to her.

"That's very pretty."

"Mmm."

"Marthe, my dear?"

"Yes?"

"Could you embroider something for me?" She looked up, startled. I had never ventured any opinion into her pastimes before. "A mask," I said slowly, "about this big?"

"Really, Robert—"

"A mask the size of a baby's face."

Of what she had persuaded herself, I knew not. Did she connect the horrible deformed thing with her son? Did she think her son had died? "For a baby's face? How absurd."

"I confess, it is for your son. The sunlight is painful on his newborn skin, you see, and we must shelter that perfect countenance from harm." How easily I lied! Why did she believe me?

"May I make it . . . beautiful?"

I nodded. "Make it what you will, Marthe." She set down her sampler and reached for scissors and dun cloth. "I'll begin now," she said. "I want to see him, you know. It was most wrong of you to take him away from me."

"Yes, I know. Finish his mask, darling, and I'll move his cradle to your chamber."

She accepted it without question, for perhaps she well knew to do otherwise was folly. She could be happy and deceive herself that the mask Erik wore did not conceal a monster.

But I could not.

It is hard to imagine how so many years can pass by so quickly, when one lives in such isolation. After I placed Marthe's mask upon Erik's face, we began our life together. I continued to work for as long as I could leave Erik in the care of his mother and the nursemaid Mme Girot. His precocity quickly made it apparent I must teach him as his constant companion, lest his intelligence be given to boredom or mischievousness. There was no doubt that he was uncannily clever from when he first began to speak at one year. Literature, grammar, history, and some mathematics I immediately gave him the groundings for. He showed a particular early aptitude for Latin. His fifth birthday he spent carrying on conversations with me entirely in Latin until his mother commanded him, out of sheer frustration, to stop. Ancient Greek and then German: I gave him the best of what I had learned, and his early fascination with languages was a particularly unnerving skill.

No longer working at the factory but managing it though my partner, I began to write treatises and observations on the natural world where we lived in isolation. I published a book, anonymously. Erik quickly responded with an interest in science. He organized experiments, and the three of us—his mother, he, and I—would occasionally walk about the hills. We might whole afternoons there as Erik filled notebooks with identification of species and observations. It was the only time he left the house.

Occasionally we would see people on these walks. I never allowed anyone to take too close an interest in Erik. If he was lonely, he did not show it—he had his parents and the servants, who had children Erik's age. He quickly tired of them, though, and would much rather be alone with a book than play with other children. He could have run away, I suppose, and we would have been virtually powerless to stop him. I think instinctually he knew that to leave his hallowed world was to provoke disaster. He sometimes spoke of seeing the outside world, but always in abstract terms.

The servants had been compelled to believe that he had a very delicate skin condition and that to remove the mask would be fatal. Whether Erik removed his mask in private I was not certain. Publicly, he slept in it, he bathed in it, he was never without it. His mother seemed to know, certainly before I did, sometimes before Erik did, when he was due for growth, and she fashioned a new mask accordingly. We kept the old ones as a sort of morbid record of his progress over the years.

Marthe and I rarely left for town, and we almost never received callers. Twice a year the doctor would report on Erik's health. I gave Erik laudanum so that he would not sense the removal of the mask. I had been optimistic that Erik's condition might improve. If anything, it appeared to get worse, sometimes erupting in sores all over his youthful body. There was nothing to be done but keep him in isolation from the outside world.

We were, curiously, happy. I never shared my wife's bed after Erik's birth, deeply afraid any more children would share his fate. Being but a man, I took one of the servants to satisfy my appetites. I was certainly discreet, and Marthe's health remained very good as we both grew older.

From his mother, Erik inherited a love for music and theatre, and from me, a fondness for opera. On the very rare occasion I took Marthe out to a play or concert—her birthday, usually---he would be very sad to be left behind. It was always a secret surprise to me that my inquisitive son never followed us out the door or disappeared permanently. Whatever you could say about Erik, he was an obedient and polite child.

When he was ten years old, however, he asked me very quietly on Christmas Day whether we could attend an opera in Lyon. Disquieted, I took him to his chamber to discuss the matter away from his mother. He told me that he had read in the newspaper that the Lyon Opera was to put on _Don Giovanni _at Shrovetide. He would dearly like to go, he said, this son of mine who had never asked for anything—and had never been outside the small sphere I had made for him.

"If you carefully study the logistics, I will consider it."

A vain hope to imagine he would sit idle! The next day he showed me, in his little lined notebook, the results of his planning. We would be fastest to descend to Grenoble on foot, a journey that would take the greater part of an afternoon. Then to take a coach from Grenoble would take two days. Hardly a comfortable proposition—the trip would take a week in all. "How do you intend to pay for this?" I asked sternly.

"My pin money," Erik said, then shrunk from me after he saw my frown. It was for the fact that he had called his monthly allowance his "pin money"—only little girls had pin money—as his mother called it. I was worried—and not irrationally—that his mother considered him having the personality of a girl.

I was going to refuse—this was an unnecessary risk. "Please, Father," he said. "I know that other children go often to town with their fathers—"

I colored slightly. "Yes, Erik, but you are not like other children."

"I know." He was cold. "A visit to the _glacière _would suffice for _them. _But this is all that I want, and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask you for it." Marthe's masks always seemed to hide the fact that Erik's eyes were yellow; I don't know how. But now I could see the yellow very clearly.

God had punished me with Erik. Yet he was my son, and it was very hard to deny him something clearly so important to him. Though my heart rumbled with fear for the consequences, I consented. "Your mother may not come," I said.

"She mustn't," he agreed. "This opera might . . . upset her." In what way upset her I could not guess. "You had better buy her a present—otherwise she will be angry."

Erik's presumptuousness and shrewdness were quite honestly frightening at times!

At Erik's suggestion, I bought Marthe a fur-trimmed cloak and muff. Besides, Marthe was indifferent to Mozart. I feared a bit to leave her for so long—in eleven years we had never spent a day apart—but a part of me was exuberant. I had missed cities far more than I knew, and to be away from my cloistered family life was an-unlooked-for boon.

Things went quite according to Erik's well-conceived plan. It was almost too cold for the long walk to Grenoble, but contrary to my misgivings, Erik's thin and frail form withstood the cold well. Wrapped as we were in scarves and hats, Erik's mask made little impact as we arrived at the inn in La Tour-du-Pin where we stayed the night. Arriving so late and beginning again so early concealed Erik from prying eyes. Some time later we arrived in Lyon. By that time, everyone was wearing masks, and Erik, quite nervous throughout the trip, seemed to finally relax.

I had to remind myself that Erik had never seen a town, much less a city as large as Lyon. His face pressed to the glass of the window, he was silent in reflection. I could tell the impression made upon him of the paved streets, gas lamps, and fashionably-dressed people was great.

"I could live on these sights for years," he said in a rare moment of awe.

For a moment, I was happy. This grotesque child whom God had made my scourge—he was clearly enjoying himself. Would another moment in his life come so intensely and innocently pleasurable?

At eight o'clock the opera commenced. We were tucked away in our seats, out of sight. Erik's mask still provoked no comment, as some in the audience were wearing masks of their own. The Overture was struck up very loudly, a bit more loudly than was necessary, but Erik was riveted. He smiled at Leperello's opening "Notte e giorno faticar"; he watched in surprise as Giovanni murdered the Commodore. A strange fascination overtook him as Leperello offered Giovanni's catalogue of conquests; he seemed suitably moved by Zerlina's sweet "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto." For him the first act ended too soon, and the wait was interminable until the second act. Two hours of the intensity, with a less-than-stellar cast, was beginning to take its toll on me. But Erik sat in thoughtful quiet until the bows.

He spoke of the scene in the graveyard for months afterwards. This was what fascinated him the most—the thought of communion in a place both so dead and still alive seemed to speak especially to him—did he recognize in his own death's-head the menace of unquiet sleep?

We were both exhausted when the performance was over, and after a few hours' sleep in the inn before setting off for home, I remembered Erik's words as we departed the opera: "I shall never be the same." Did he really understand the gravity of what he said? His words were more prophetic than I could have ever feared.

He began to pore over scores and would not rest until he had learned to sight-read music. The cottage piano was moved from my wife's boudoir to the parlor. Marthe set to teaching him to play. Soon enough he had gone beyond what she could teach him. He grew frustrated, and she grew cross; it was the only time I had seen him angry with her. In good time, he did all the playing, and she would sit for hours and listen to him. He would play anything set before him—technically, he was accomplished. Still too young to be a real virtuoso, though, as he lacked the feeling. But he would play for hours. The only thing he would sing, however, was _Don Giovanni._

His mother was suitably impressed by his boy soprano voice—even if it rendered every part in the opera laughable by its high pitch. I listened every day as Erik's voice grew stronger and prouder, and he moved from the simple recitatives to the most difficult passages. A boy with no formal musical training possessed a voice pure and powerful, caressing and cold. It was a voice full of persuasion and promises. The melody and trance-like quality of it could not be imagined. Soon he was singing Don Giovanni to his mother's Donna Anna or Donna Elvira, and to say it didn't disturb me would be a lie. When I was called into the family musicale to play the Commodore, I bluntly refused and nearly lost my temper.

It wasn't much longer until Erik was composing his own music. He began timidly, waiting until his mother was taking a nap and I was out, to play his pieces on the piano. They were childish things at first, then very rapidly I realized his talents were far beyond his years. But these were not études corralled by morals and good breeding. From some place deep within, Erik was taking the yearnings of his soul and expressing them. The music could be achingly beautiful—or violent, discordant. He was reluctant at first to play any of his music for his mother and me. Eventually her insistence won over, and he played short pieces emulating birds and streams—the simple things in our country existence. His four-part suite on Lyon was boisterous and bright and pleased his mother not at all.

He became devoted to his music, to the exclusion of all else. One afternoon in May, after he had turned fifteen, I was waiting for him to get ready, to accompany me in the hills as we had before. I found him at his desk in his chamber—the same small room that used to be the nursery—coaxing his hand to write out the notes he saw in his head.

"Are we not going for our walk?" I asked.

"Father," he said, "do you know what I am going to be when I grow up?"

Although I had not expected this topic to come up at that moment, it was not one I had never heard before. Before it had been a career rooted in the sciences—biology, botany. "What, Erik?"

"Don Giovanni," he said.

As a scientist, there was always the slightest chance he could remain in some cloister like our house had become and live and work successfully, live a close to normal life. But to train as a tenor was impossible—though the tragedy, of course, was that he had the voice that could do opera justice. "Erik, to devote yourself to opera is a large sacrifice—"

"I don't mean the character," he said irritatedly. "I will _be _Don Juan."

I froze a moment. I looked at his calm, earnest face, the yellow, peering eyes behind the mask. "What do you mean?"

He cleared his throat, his eyes filling with insolence. "A great lover, Father. I intend to have many women."

I felt suddenly very cold, and a tingling sensation stung my fingertips. Was God in His Judgment not yet satisfied with my penance? Was He now to show my own sin reflected in such an outrageous offspring, to see it twisted in the very result of its own bastardly beginnings? Was that stain of my desire to produce its own blasts of stain all over the life I had done my best to provide for him? I must have been white with rage, for I saw him shrink back from me. "You must not speak such nonsense, Erik!" I did not blush to tell him what I said next; I did not know when I said it if it was truth or perjury. "You must understand that you are not . . . capable of—of consorting with women!"

I had an uncontrollable urge to strike him and those so-superior yellow eyes now confused. "But you're mistaken, Father," he said. "I know that I am capable."

I felt myself almost unable to stand. Could he have possibly seduced someone in this very household—this deformed atrocity? "How—how--?"

"I haven't had a woman yet—" he assured me.

"Then how do you know?" He was uncomfortably silent. "Speak, then!"

"Certain . . . moments alone . . ."

I felt my rage returning in full force. This sin was both product and vice. "Onanism, Erik? The . . . perfidious sin of solitary vice?"

He no longer looked afraid of me, but he seemed surprised, unsure. "A sin? Why would that be? It gives nothing but pleasure to me."

"Erik," I said, as calmly as I could, "you cannot do this, do you understand? It's base, shameful, and vile. You are a brilliant boy—do not stain yourself this way."

He glowered. "Your religion means nothing to me. I'll conduct myself as I see fit."

I sighed. "It is not just religion that forbids this, Erik. There is medical proof that it causes tremors and eventually insanity."

He stared at me. "Four years, and I've noticed no effects."

All semblance of calm fled—to know that he had been promulgating this sin for four years brought me swiftly to action. "You will never have any woman, Erik. _That _you must accept."

Suddenly there was shame. He touched the mask his mother had embroidered beautifully for him. "It's my face, isn't it? There's something wrong with my face." I could say nothing; despite my anger, I did not wish to hurt him. I saw him gnash his teeth in rage. "All the more reason to continue, I think!" He threw his composition book closed. "Now, you may leave."

My shock outweighed my outrage. "You will cease this practice immediately."

He did not cease, immediately or otherwise. For months it was silent war between us. To spite me, he made a point of spending hours locked in his chamber alone. I threatened him, I beat him, I forced him to wear an English-made contraption to discourage him. His insolence only worsened; he had the impudence to, in my presence—it is too vulgar to describe. I was quite honestly afraid his mother might find out. But then, abruptly, his behavior stopped—or at least became imperceptible. It was this same time he stopped speaking to me, stopped playing music, to his mother's disappointment. Though it did not occur to me then, I feel certain that he had glimpsed his face in a mirror and realized what I had said was true.

Instead, he took out all the architectural books he had received as a birthday gift long before and read them devotedly. Then—through his mother—he requested more. I heard him say to her, "I am going to build something spectacular, Mother."

"A church?" she asked.

"No, some kind of monument."

"I doubt I'll live to see it, dear." (She was neither old then nor in ill health.)

"It shall be done soon," he said. "I am like Mozart—I am a young genius."

Perhaps he was.

He was sixteen, and very tall for his age, spindly, pale, his skin occasionally covered with blisters. He spent most of his hours in his room with his architecture books, poring over them with the single-minded enthusiasm he had shown a year before for composition. It was early spring, an uncertain time when the late frosts and snows were less than a week's memory. It was over a month before the doctor's next visit, so I could not imagine who could be at the door.

The cold, steel-cold, faces of Marthe's parents greeted me. "We've come to see our daughter," they said. They had not seen her in sixteen years, because of my careful prevention of their having any contact. They had received periodic letters from Marthe, though I closely censored any mention of Erik. I hid their letters from her, and eventually I think she believed they had forgotten about her, or maybe died.

Was I cruel? Undoubtedly. But all these years I had been trading one cruelness for another, infinitely worse as I saw it. Marthe was surprised and then confused to see her parents; as one not totally in control of her mind, she vacillated between outrageous joy and distrust. Her parents, though they had everything to blame me for, seemed to know that her grip on reality had been well-maintained while she had remained in isolation with me.

Her mother left the room stifling a sob, and as I followed her out, I did my best to explain the situation. Standing out in the hall was Erik, who never saw visitors—had rarely spoken to anyone outside the household. He didn't seem to understand, even as he had been listening, that these were his grandparents. "Who is that?" asked Marthe's mother.

I waited for Erik to respond. He was silent, curious, confused, despite his considerable intelligence. "One of the servants," I said perfunctorily, hurrying Marthe's mother back to her daughter's chamber.

Did they intend to stay? Did they intend to take Marthe away from my care? I never found out their real intentions, as Marthe—in her strange state of being between false memories and reality—let slip she had a son.

"Well, bring him in here!" demanded her father. "We have a right to see our own grandchild. It was criminal, criminal, to keep him from us."

I waited to see if anyone objected. I went into the hall where Erik was standing in the same spot, though his eyes were filled with an intense hatred. "Go on, Erik," I said, torn between dread and anger. "Your grandparents want to see you."

He made no sign that he had heard me name them his grandparents, moved silently into the room. "There you are, Erik, dear!" said his mother. "Skulking in corners? You should know—"

"Why is he wearing a mask?"

I looked at my wife. She had motioned for Erik to come sit beside her as he often did. "He has a skin disorder," she said. "He cannot go without his mask."

"What does he look like underneath?"

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with him. His skin is very sensitive to light."

Her father looked Erik over with a critical, hurting eye. "Why didn't you write to us about him?"

"I did! I wrote so much about him—his compositions, his—"

"Take off the mask. Let's see his face."

Erik's grandfather was staring at him incisively, while his grandmother saved pure loathing for me. "No, you don't understand, Papa," said Marthe. "His skin—"

"Take it off, I say. A moment or two—I just want to see the face of my grandson."

Erik had been sitting rigid, tense and unhappy. "No, I don't wish to take it off," he said.

Marthe's mother looked worried. "Perhaps we shouldn't . . ."

"Now, my boy, I see that your father has done great wrong by you," said Marthe's father. "You've been kept here—you haven't been allowed to meet your grandparents. You probably didn't even know we were still alive, did you?" Erik shook his head slowly. "No, I thought not. Well, now that we've seen you, we're going to take you away." He looked at his wife for confirmation. "You and your mother."

"But—"

"Have you not even learned politeness, Erik, is it?" His grandfather could thunder better than I could. "I say, listen to me. And you can start by taking off that mask." Erik's grandfather reached across and ripped the beautifully-embroidered mask from my son's face.

His mother was the first to react. She leapt across the bed, screaming and sobbing. Did she understand that this was the same rotten face she had seen on a baby sixteen years before? She howled in fright and disgust, begging for "the thing" to go away. Erik threw his hands over his face; Marthe's mother turned white. Erik took a last look at his mother as she screamed at him and ran from the room. I went to comfort m y gibbering, terrified wife—but her mother reached her first and interposed. Her father did not look nearly as shocked as anyone else in the room; he made the sign of the Cross and said to me, "Well. God is just."

I left the room, my wife's desperate sobs resounding in my ears, my son's hollow eyes, grotesquely stretched skin, and hole for a nose blistering my sight. Erik was on the threshold to his chamber, sobbing quietly. His mother's love was all he had been certain of in his small world. I'm sure he heard me approach, but he continued to weep, neither hiding his face nor concealing his sobs. Something in me broke. I put my hand on the skeletal shoulder.

"Get away from me!" My hand was struck back viciously. Erik leapt to his feet, his grotesque visage rendered frightening by his look of rage. "You are the reason I'm like this!" His words had the force of a blow. "You made me this way—because of your sin, I am forever doomed to live a life of suffering! Do you think I haven't understood it, finally, why I live this way? _You_ were Don Juan," he said, "and instead of Hell swallowing you up in flames, it spat out me, as I am! I was born a genius, but you made me a monster!"

My hands turned convulsively into fists. The ugly part of me that had leaked into him became something unspeakable. Frustration that my father-in-law had ruined everything I had worked so hard to achieve made me mad. It was Marthe's fault—Marthe who had been so stupid, so unthinking! "This particular sin doesn't just belong to me, Erik—you can thank your mother for your face!"

"That's a lie!" he snapped, tears streaming from his yellow eyes.

What made me say it? My own twisted soul's acknowledgment that in him, I had failed? "You're not even my son, did you know that? Your mother was dallying with many men when I knew her—any of them—"

Erik flew at me, pinning me down and bringing his hands to my throat. I thought to fend off a sixteen-year old's blows, but it soon became apparent that Erik was much stronger than I—he was preternaturally strong. My lungs were bursting, my throat burned, and the vicious yellow eyes I saw above me were slowly fading into night. How circular, I thought dreamily, that the evil I had spawned was going to destroy me . . .

I found myself on the ground, dizzy and nauseous. Something had stayed Erik; he had moved from my chest and was standing over me. He pushed me roughly out of the way, then slammed his door shut. I found I could not speak, but I scratched at the door. "Kill me!" Erik's voice was racked with sobs from the other side. "Do this kindness for me, please!"

He said no more. I got to my feet, stumbled, and fell into oblivion. I next found myself on my own bed. The doctor was hovering over me, looking at his pocket watch. My wife, on her own bed, was fast asleep. My wife's parents were watching gravely. "Don't get up," said the doctor. "Nothing's been damaged, but you should rest." He looked across the room darkly. "As should your wife."

"Erik?" I could barely speak, and it hurt to do so.

"I've examined him," said the doctor gravely. "I've given him some laudanum to calm him down. He's asleep."

I sighed. I remembered the thing my son had begged me to do and shivered. "May we speak?" asked Marthe's father. The doctor bowed and left. "We've decided. We are taking Marthe to Paris for the summer."

I could elicit no protest. I had done my best to shelter; let them now try to keep her in their own way. "As for your son—"

"You needn't worry yourself about him," I said. "I'll take care of him—"

"This has been a burden on you." It was Marthe's mother. "It was a sin, and you have paid for it. Now it is time for mercy."

"There was nothing merciful in the way you exposed him!"

They both looked away uncomfortably. "There can be no kindness in letting him live. Surely you see what a menace to society he will be if his own mother cannot look at him?"

I considered what Erik had said. Perhaps his wish was justified. "Perhaps you are right," I said slowly. "But what you are advocating is murder."

"It is the only way!"

I remembered Erik's plea. I thought of the horrible things I had said to him, quite untrue, how much he must despise me, how much my own heart had always rebelled at ever touching him. Erik's brilliant mind had no future while his face existed. I had tried once before, and failed . . .

It was not difficult to get the doctor to administer more laudanum. When Erik was safely beyond the reaches of reality, I placed him in the straw-lined back of a cart and drove as far as the mountain path would allow. I thought of everything and nothing as I half-carried, half-dragged Erik's lifeless body across a deserted hill. He was dressed in his best clothes, which, he had worn to Lyon, the most beautiful mask his mother had ever made. I was weeping, thinking that what I was doing was mercy. But I knew it was weak, and foolish, and evil.

I left my son to die, knowing that all my sins until now had been trifles in comparison to this most inhuman betrayal. I did not ever expect to see him again—my next world was Damnation, and I did not think Erik would share that fate.


	2. Man of the World

ii. Man of the World

A better man would have been able to rub sixteen years out of his memory and start fresh. But every day I thought of Erik: I wondered if his ugliness had damned him irrevocably to Hell, or if his innocence—and his utter innocence in my dreadful act of his murder—sent him straight up to a Heaven where the Angels had no need of a mask for him.

I had time to meditate on these matters as Marthe remained in Paris with her parents for some nine months without sending a word of correspondence to me. I considered this unimaginative but just payment for keeping her in isolation so long. A few weeks before Christmas that year, I received a letter from Marthe's mother. Her husband, their provider, had died quite unexpectedly of an accident. Though she did not disguise her distrust and dislike of me, she asked me to join them in Paris. The arrangements to sell the house were not difficult to make, and within a month I was able to pay the rent on the little flat in the 2ième they had furnished. It was not difficult to leave that hateful country where I was constantly reminded of my own part in Erik's death.

I found my wife much changed. At first she did not seem to know who I was. Then, when she seemed to remember in the distant past a spouse, she was cool and did not seem to recollect ever having had a son. This was for the best, I judged. When the subject of the theatre was broached, however, the coldness melted away, and as husband and wife we again went to plays and operas—all the more spectacular because it was Paris.

One consequence of Marthe's charmed life in Paris was that she had grown very fat. The short walks from carriage to box, especially if there were stairs, left her winded. She began complaining of heart tremors. I paid for her to see a specialist, of course. Her mother fretted, sending me dark looks as if Marthe's condition was my fault—and perhaps, in a way, it was. The physician took the money but divulged that, at this point, there was nothing to be done. A strict diet and more exercise would only upset her frail heart; she would not consent to bed rest.

She died in the lonely month of November, at the age of thirty-three. I mourned her. I had never really loved her, but her absence left a large hole in my life. I was feeling ill and distressed long after her funeral, and long before her mother then stated point-blank that she no longer wished to live in the same house with me. "Your duty is charged," she said, "and if you will send me an annual allowance I will get by quite comfortably on my own."

Though my conscience revolted at the idea of leaving a woman of her age alone, it was a condition upon which she insisted and she, too, was dead within the year. By February I had left Paris, on a scheme with which I did not expect to succeed. I felt displaced and useless, out of work and anonymous. There needed to be a change in my life, one large enough to drive out the deaths of my son and wife. The solution I chose was Algeria.

In the papers, advertisements gave good cases for travel to South America, to the Western United States. Then there was Algiers. For a small fee and a promise to make good, a man could get a tract of land and set himself up very easily. I did not fear the hard work of a laborer's life. Coming over, I was already miles socially above the _pieds-noirs, _and hard work was what I needed to keep my thoughts out of myself.

I settled in Algiers, and it seemed that two years passed more quickly there than in France. The heat was at times intolerable, but the rough country had its appeals: little Moslem women, coming sweetly from behind black-fringed veils. I began to work on my scientific treatises again, focusing on the strange and vibrant fauna of this land, and learned a little Arabic here and there. This was muddled Arabic, of course, Berber-tarnished dialects that helped me little in later travels.

To say I was happy would be facetious, but a widower in my position could hardly have had cause to complain. Life was comparatively quiet and calm. The English were fighting the Moslems over land; one read about it in the papers. This was how I heard of the Shah of Persia and his magnificent court at Gulistān. I received little mail, having lost most of my family and having disassociated myself with Grenoble and everyone there since—since Erik. But the newspapers, both our local ragtag publications and _Le Monde, _I made certain to read them as often as possible. I had missed most of the revolutions fomenting in Paris by a few years, but that did not convince me that more were not coming. Algiers, beyond its exterior of calm, was no less potent.

The Shah was named Naser od-Din, the papers told me. He had ascended the Peacock Throne in 1848; it was a comical idea to compare this king with Emperor Napoléon III, and yet for a man who had lived so long in Algiers, it was inevitable. I admit my curiosity was piqued in March of 1858. It was the Moslem New Year, I remember; upon arriving in Algiers almost ten years previously, I had considered it absurd for a New Year to begin in March. Then, as weather slowly convinced me that March was as good a time as any, I began to forget that January 1st, the feast of St. Sylvestre, was when I was supposed to be changing my calendar.

This was what I heard, and what intrigued me: Abd ol-Vahhāb Khān-e Shirāzi, the Persian deputy manager of foreign affairs, had commanded a telegraph line experimentally installed in Tehran to the outskirts of the city. It was surprising enough that this nation of Moslem savages had succeeded in at last bringing civilization to their continent of desert and fleas; but there was a rumor, too, that the deputy manager was only a figurehead for this immense project. In fact, the rumors said, the real instigator was a European who had imbedded himself into the court ways of the Persians as to have enormous, unspeakable influence.

After nearly ten years of living in my dusty Algerian home, alone aside from my servants and newspapers, I found something that made me desirous to go to the court of this Shah and his supposed European assistant. I had heard terrible stories of the conflict between the English and Shah's army in '56 and '57, but those matters had been settled satisfactorily. I had resolved to visit the court of Gulistān; because I had lived for so long without the added expense of women in my life, I had accumulated enough in gold to take the overland route with as much comfort as could be expected.

I had heard that the Shah was going to move court to the cooler region of Kurdistan for the summer, and despite the hassle of travel in May, this was when I arrived in Tehran. I arrived in court in the entourage of an eccentric Venetian prince and his cluster of European hanger-ons. Without his patronage, I never would have come within sight of the Shah-in-Shah. The Shah had been misinformed and assumed that all those attending on the Venetian were European dignitaries. Perhaps the sight of me simply amused him.

This heretic Shah was holding informal court in the delightfully airy gardens of the Gulistān when I was introduced to him. I mumbled some greeting in pathetic Arabic to his feet; even I was not fool enough not to pay kow-tow to the Shah-in-Shah. He looked younger than I had expected, the short glance I saw of his face, though I knew him to be older than a boy.

"Ah, Monsieur Lucas, please do not torture us all with your approximation of Arabic," said the Shah in very crisp French. In surprise, I found myself staring at his very white teeth. "As you can tell, I speak French quite well."

"Indeed, Your Excellency," I replied, murmuring. The other Persians who surrounded him laughed genially at my humiliation.

"You are a citizen of Algiers now, yes?" he asked. I could only nod. "Tell me, what brings you to my court?"

"To be frank, Your Majesty, it was the subject of your telegraph."

He smiled again, showing his excellent teeth and clapping his hands together. "You are in luck, Monsieur Lucas, for my French tutor and the engineer of this new technology are one and the same. Erik," he called over his shoulder, and the name froze me despite the heat of May, "_viens._"

A very tall man in dark robes moved behind the Shah, and I knew as soon as I saw the mask that my son had not died that day, ten years before. My blood was sluggish, and I trembled; I barely dared to look into his yellow eyes. But he made no indication that he recognized me. He was cold and aloof.

"Erik, here is a countryman, interested in your telegraph." The Shah waved Erik toward me. He still made no sign of recognition, and I was too frightened to say anything.

"Monsieur," he said at last, nodding almost imperceptibly. "And as for the matter of telegraphs . . ."

The Shah, satisfied, told me to enjoy the ices and then moved off with his entourage. I could not look into Erik's face. I shuddered in the shock of his being—alive.

"Erik—" I began in a choked voice.

"Not here, you fool," he hissed, and with a savage swirl of his cloak, he had melted into the crowd. Confused by his words, I stood rooted to the spot, until the Venetian prince's party came to collect me. Ordinarily, if a Persian prince had told me to eat ices, I most certainly would have. But a tide of sick dread wove over me, making me nearly faint. I dumbly followed the Venetian prince out of the Gulistān garden until a shadow whispered in my ear, "Leaving so soon, Monsieur Lucas?"

I turned and stepped back upon seeing a tall Persian with startling green eyes smiling down at me with the glittering grin of a _genii. _"Excuse me," I murmured, "but I don't believe I've made your acquaintance."

He laughed at some private joke before saying, "I come from Erik. He has sent for you."

I could not tell whether I should feel relieved or worried. I felt very cold, despite the heat. "Lead on, then, Persian," I said in what I hoped was a steady voice. He eyed me slyly with those damned green eyes, then turned with a flourish and walked with confident steps in the direction of the Shah's enormous palace.

In vain did I attempt to soak in the majesty of this Oriental cloisonné box; the Persian moved quickly into a particularly ornate wing of the building I later learned was reserved for visiting officials of state. The Venetian prince himself had a room in this wing. The inside of the great marble structure was cool, lattice-windowed, and tiled in vibrant colors. It was nothing to any comparable European palace, but there was no denying its vastness.

Abruptly the Persian stopped in front of a finely carved wooden door, leading into a suite of rooms. "The lion waits within," said the Persian with another curious chuckle, bowing to me mockingly.

"Are you his servant?" I asked, wishing immediately I had not.

He pronounced an unfamiliar Arabic curse and took me by the throat, thrusting me against the cool wall. He was a good deal taller than I, I soon realized—and like my son had been, too—stronger. "I am the daroga of Mazenderan, though I don't suppose that means anything to you." He spat at my feet. "Ask Erik to explain it to you."

Angrily, he dropped me and sped away. I was alone at the large wooden doors. Softly, I knocked. "_Entrez_," said a voice, colder than the tile against which I had just been pinioned.

I gathered myself to my fullest height, smoothing back the sweaty hair on my pate, dusting off my faded suit. I pushed at the door and found myself in a clean, sumptuously furnished area. Sitting at a low wood table, in the same dark, Arab-style robes as in the Gulistān, was my son. All I could see of his body was a tiny area around his lips, his forehead, and his long, pale hands. He had them on the table between two small silver cups and a silver teapot. I saw the yellow in his eyes. "_Et voilà," _he said. "_C'est vraiment vous." _

Suddenly, and without warning, I felt relief that this additional crime—the abandonment to death of my son—had not really taken place. Of this, I was glad—this ugly child of mine, I was glad he was alive. I held out my arms stupidly, stammering, "Erik . . . you won't believe me when I say this, but—"

"That you're glad to see me? What a relief it is?" He sneered like a hardened man of fifty, though I knew he was not yet twenty-seven. He moved from his seat, cross-legged on a beautiful Turkish carpet, and turned his back to me. "You're right, I don't believe you. I know that you had meant for me to die." I saw his white hand contract. "What a shock for you, I suppose, to see me again."

"Yes," I admitted.

He was silent, absorbed in his own thoughts, and I stood idly. "Why are you here?" he asked in a voice far less grandiose with rancor than before.

"In Tehran?" I asked.

"Not in France," he snapped. He spun around, and his eyes were both angry and full of despair. I was glad then he had this new mask—black, made of wood, with only slits for eyes and mouth—to disguise the horror of his face twisted with emotions uglier than the deformity. "Where is my mother?"

I sighed. It suddenly struck me with clarity, for he had always loved his mother much more than he had me—he thought I had abandoned her. I suppose he didn't dare think a woman of forty-four could be dead.

"I'm sorry, Erik," I said. "She died almost ten years ago."

He made no sign of emotion other than his shoulders slumping. "How?" he roared. I stumbled back a bit, against the wooden door. He stared at me. He gave a wide sweep of his arm. "Forgive me—where are my fine European manners? Sit down, have some tea, and tell me how my mother died."

I hesitated, then moved to be seated, cross-legged across from him. "No chairs," I muttered.

"What was that?" he said, his voice like an ice-pick.

"You have no chairs," I said.

"It is not the custom," he said, pouring steaming tea into both cups. The scent was like Moroccan mint with honey. "Though I daresay your having lived in Algiers should have habituated you to that." He glanced at me sideways. "Surprised? The spy network here in the palace is very good. It is known that you arrived in Algiers in 1856 and have been living on the rue Zidag for a number of years." He sniffed. "That is your tea, _Father." _He watched me like the lion the Persian man had said he was. "You aren't afraid I've poisoned it, are you?"

"Forgive me, for I can no longer be sure, but I don't think that's your style," I said honestly.

Did he smile? It was difficult to tell. Recalling the vehement Persian, I asked, "Your friend, the Persian with green eyes, who is he?"

Erik put down the teapot carefully. "He is not my friend. He is a business associate."

"He said he was the daroga of Mazenderan, whatever that may be."

Again, the elusive smile. "Daroga is a sort of Persian chief of police. And Mazenderan is a maritime province. You really haven't been in Tehran long, have you?" The superior tone was no different than the one he had possessed as a boy of sixteen. "Now, speak of my mother."

I told him the simple facts of her move to Paris, her exertions that led to her death. He was silent for a long time, giving me a chance to drink my tea. At last he said, "Then why Algiers? And why come to Tehran?"

"I wanted to get as far away from France as I could," I said simply. "There was no reason to remain in Paris and certainly no reason to return to Grenoble." I shuddered. The news neither seemed to surprise nor interest him. He drank his tea in silence. "I confess it was foolish, but it really was the news of the telegraph that brought me here."

"I see," he said. He swirled his tea disinterestedly.

Finally, I said, "And you, Erik, how did you become so close to the Shah-in-Shah?"

"We talk as if we are old friends," he said dully. "I do not for a moment forget that you sought to end my life."

"I . . . thought it for the best," I said miserably.

"And you for a moment do not forget the hideousness that prompted such an action." For a moment it almost sounded as if he admired me. "You ask it so lightly—yet what you ask has not been granted in full to a single soul, not even the daroga."

He gazed at me with the hooded wariness of a snake. "There is to be a performance tomorrow—follow Marco della Compostella—" for that was the Venetian prince's name, "—he has been invited. It is something of my doing, as the Shah and the little sultana often employ me to entertain them. Attend that, be vigilant, and if you still wish my acquaintance, come back. If not, then we are free of each other for the rest of our lives." He pressed his hands together as if trying to imitate their heathen mystics. "Now go."

In my day, fathers never took orders from their sons, no matter how degraded in circumstance they might be. But my extraordinary son brooked no argument, and I rose, without a farewell, and left him.

I had grown used to hot nights in Algiers, but in Tehran I could not sleep.

I stayed close to my Venetian prince the next day that dawned, repulsed and yet fascinated by the thought of what entertainment Erik could supervise for the Shah-in-Shah and his favorite young wife. I learned, from others in the prince's party, that the sultana, although beautiful—and clever, as Arab women went—delighted above all in the suffering of others. That reviled nobleman, so well-known in my own country, the Marquis de Sade, came unbidden to mind. It was doubly repellant in a female. But I confess to curiosity on that account, too. I was no longer optimistic that a musical recital would be the proof of Erik's skills.

It is useless to say that he had changed. He had been sixteen when I had last seen him, a sheltered boy. The arrogance and talent that had dominated his personality seemed to have taken him over, surrounding him like a clouded shell. Now the politeness his mother and I had tried hard to instill in him came derisively, and despite this, reflected his own self-loathing for all to see. I would hear in court that he was called a heartless monster, that the deformity was nothing compared to his arrogant scorn for the lives of others. But I, who had seen him run from the room when his mother screamed to see him, presumed to know him better.

Though we were going to an entertainment and were subject to a great honor, no one in the prince's party was smiling as we entered the long, winding corridors of the Gulistān palace, descending further into the palace than I really wished to go. We entered a very large room with a low ceiling. It was dark inside, lit by brass braziers swinging with jasmine scent and dusty rose. Other foreign diplomats had assembled, among them delegates from a distant Slavic court, dark Coptic chieftains from Egypt, and a very fat, nervous American in a linen suit. Arabic flashed through the room; other tongues were spoken more softly. The Shah himself was seated atop a high divan, surrounded by his Grand Vizier and other important officials—the daroga too was there. A little below sat a small, giggly woman in claustrophobic veils—the sultana—surrounded by her women. I saw no sign of Erik.

Sweet meats both familiar and foreign were served to all the guests, as well as honeyed dates and almond milk. After some time had passed, the Shah rose—and all around him, we made deference. I supposed to do otherwise would have cost one's life. "Worthy friends," he said in Arabic, "and guests of honor, you are welcome here this afternoon. My sultana, Houda Behfar ibn Kalim ibn Airyaman ibn Aytun Abdurrashid, bids you peace and comfort here. If you would kindly take your seats and gather round, the entertainment will begin shortly."

The door through which we had entered was suddenly shut by great, ogre-like eunuchs, fearsome-looking beasts. It was quite dark by now, and as we crowded around the Shah, someone drew back curtains I had not seen before. A great gallery of windows sent jets of light streaming in. We all leaned forward to see what might lie beyond the windows. Before I could distinguish anything, a hand was at my shoulder. "Monsieur Lucas, someone takes a particular interest in you." It was Pietro, the prince's chief groom. He nodded toward the daroga, who was staring at me fixedly. Quite irrationally, I feared for my life.

"He must have confused me with someone else," I said, moving closer to a window.

Looking down through the glass windows, we saw an empty room, peculiarly shaped with six sides. The floor was tiled in green, quite ingeniously to resemble grass. The ceiling was tiled in a similar manner, but the walls were all long sheets of thick glass. In the center of the room was a high pole. Attached to it were branches cut from trees. We waited.

From a small trap door at the bottom of the room, two men climbed out. They were fearsome-looking, armed with axes, and sabers at their belts. As they leapt out of the trap door, something peculiar stuck me—there was no sound of their footfalls. We realized very soon that the glass room was sound-proof. The men stood, gazing about them, and again we waited.

The walls began to spin at the same time the tiled floor began to rotate in the opposite direction. Clearly not anticipating this, the men inside began to twirl in circles or dance haphazardly. Indeed, they looked rather comical, and many of the guests laughed. It soon became clear, however, that both men were confused and in distress. One began to walk toward the mirrors, continually hitting his face against the glass, while the other was removing layers of clothing. They had both set down their weapons; unwise, it seemed to me.

"What are they doing?" someone had the presumption to ask.

The Shah glanced into the crowd, and the little sultana laughed. It was a hideous laugh to come from such a beautiful creature. The Grand Vizier addressed the crowd, between breaths of hookah. "This very special room . . . The effect of the mirrors is to produce on the invited the false impression of a forest. The object is to disorient. Highly intensified solar lights produce heat, and the illusion of a tropical jungle is complete."

The crowd murmured; our other question remained unanswered: why? We continued to watch in silence as servants offered us sherbet. We, too, had begun to grow warm watching the men succumbing to the heat. Though it was impossible to imagine the effect of this strange contraption, we could all see the exhaustion and confusion on the faces of the men. For what? we all wondered. Abruptly, one of the men got to his feet and began kicking the glass panels. He was wearing soft shoes of skin, but he was kicking violently nonetheless.

The Shah took note of this and whispered something to the sultana. A servant disappeared behind a curtain. The Shah announced, "Good people, we would now like to introduce you to the creator of this technological marvel, and many other inventions besides. Erik will dispatch the invited now, if you would care to look."

A Persian member of court, more bold than the rest, asked, "Who are these men? What have they done?"

The daroga bowed to the Shah and then to us, saying, "They are criminals of the lowest order. Thieves and traitors to the Glory of the World." He touched his forehead, looking at the Shah. I felt his gaze burn on me. "They are to be executed."

A general outcry arose, but it was reduced to a murmur as a dark figure appeared on the edge of the hexagonal structure. He was carrying nothing but a long, braided rope. The men inside did not see him at first, so destroyed in their minds already. When they did, he was creeping about and disappearing before they even had time to take their weapons. Despite their weapons, the men seemed distracted, unable to face their attacker.

"Ventriloquism," said one of the Coptic Egyptians. "They say he is a master."

"They also say he is a monster," someone replied darkly.

I could well believe it of Erik. My flesh turned cold at what would happen next. I waxed into my own tongue, murmuring, "_Arretez, arretez," _under my breath. Perhaps the Shah heard. In any case, Erik struck. With an elegant, unexpected flick of his wrist, the lasso he held took the first of the men and sent him to the floor. We could none of us hear the crack of the neck, but we all felt it. I knew that what the daroga had said might be true—that these men were despicable criminals—and yet this Persian barbarity did not sit well with an Occidental conscience.

The little sultana had meanwhile burst into peals of laughter. None of the rest of us, I fear, entertained her enthusiasm. The Shah's white teeth flashed. "This entertainment was arranged for your enjoyment," he said sharply. "If there are any who disapprove of the sultana's mirth, he will soon find himself acquiring a more intimate relationship with the Punjab lasso."

As if the enunciate this point, the remaining man took a lunge at Erik, both weapons in hand. Erik danced circles around him, then draped the lasso around his neck. Many of the onlookers turned away. The Shah was smiling grimly, and the sultana chuckled. Below, in the hexagonal room, my son gathered up the coils of the lasso and bowed respectfully to the Shah.

The doors were then cast open, and a sickly sunlight came with them. The Shah said nothing as his guests began to file out; there was no need. The threat that came with his "entertainment" was clear to all of us. Again, the daroga's eyes were on me like a hawk's. It was then that I remembered what Erik had said—should I wish to renew the acquaintance, I should see him after the "entertainment." That my son had become such a monster was somehow unsurprising. That he should make a career as a court assassin debased his skills in architecture—though the design of the room was extraordinary, to be sure—and in music, but what could one expect from someone as monstrously deformed as he?

No, I did not wish to renew my acquaintance with this twisted offspring of my flesh. But neither did I wish to retreat into the slinking night, as he no doubt intended me to. This cursed boy, who had grown into a completely over-proud man, no doubt considered me a coward. I resolved then that I would bid farewell to Erik—Erik Lucas, who did not even wish to keep my last name—_face à face, homme à homme. _

I waited outside the doors until the daroga found me there. "_Vous me suprisez_, Monsieur," he said in his insultingly fluent French. "Erik said that you would flee the moment the performance was over."

"It is none of your business," I said dryly.

He laughed in the delighted manner of the horrible sultana, rubbing the goatee upon his chin thoughtfully. "Very well. Follow me."

And again he led me down the corridors to the guest quarters, more cautious, this time, to the fact that we were not seen. Brutish eunuchs and other servants came and went, but none stopped the daroga. He left me at the threshold to Erik's apartments with a bow and a sneer. This time, I did not knock. I pressed at the door and entered. The room, as I had not cared to notice before, was barely furnished but vast. The far south corner included a large, curtained window. Erik was at the window ledge looking out, his back to me. He gripped the ledge hard with his white fingers. "Has French etiquette so degenerated that gentlemen do not even knock?"

I left the door slightly open. "Erik, I am not here for hypocritical chit-chat. I have come to say goodbye to you, and nothing more."

He turned, his black robes billowing. "I am surprised to find you possessed of such a strong stomach, although I shouldn't be. The apple never falls very far from the tree, as they say."

He insinuated, of course, that I was as morally corrupt as he was, and in a way, of course, he was right. He had called me Don Juan once and attributed to all his moral decay to my influence. But his mother was dead, and I hoped my sins against her had long ago been absolved. "Goodbye," I said firmly.

"You may think that you came here only to bid farewell," he said, moving closer. "But you are curious—intensely curious—as to how a rotten corpse survived and came to such power in the court of Tehran."

I was momentarily startled—he had never before referred to himself in such a way; instead always calling himself a genius and a prodigy, and so forth. Something old and unused in me stirred at his self-loathing. He swept by me, bringing mixed scents of cloves and something molding, festering, to close the door behind me. I did not move any closer.

"Erik, I fear . . . "

"Fear?" he asked, his voice lightening. "How curious of you to say that. 'Fear' is the word most frequently associated with me, here at court and otherwise." He received no response other than my fervently shaking my head.

"Sit down, _Father, _you'll be more comfortable," he said, removing the long Bedouin cape he wore and hanging it up.

"Really, this cannot go on," I said sternly. "I confess to some curiosity, but I will not indulge it if the price is that I excuse the display I just saw."

"Ah, so righteous. If you will not indulge yourself, indulge me." I stared at him. "Perhaps I wish to have an audience. Yes, I believe after all this time I am desirous to divulge my soul—rather like Confession, no?" He shrugged. "But you were never a practicing Catholic as I recall."

I turned to leave. "Sit down!" There was menace in his words that suddenly alerted me to his position and power, and that perhaps if I opened the door I would find sabers at my throat or myself thrown into a dungeon . . . I stiffly remained where I was. "Well, if you would prefer to stand . . ." He opened a small black box at his feet and took out a bottle of wine, the excellent Veuve-Cliqot vintage of 1835. "I thought this meeting might require something stronger than tea." He proceeded to pour two glasses. I did not move. He seated himself on the floor, cross-legged, and tasted his wine. There was a care, a deliberateness, to how he laid things out—had he really never spoken of this time to anyone else? Why should I be the most appropriate witness? _Because he has no one else, _an annoying voice ventured.

He began, "So, how I came to Persia. As you know, _Father, _I was left for dead on the side of a mountain." I did not dare bow my head when he looked at me. "When I discovered I was alone, I tried to find the way back home. I was still half-drugged and weak with hunger, so it was only a matter of time before I realized I was hopelessly lost. What do you think I did then, Father?" His voice was full of contempt.

"Erik, you obviously do not wish to be associated with me in any way; you have dropped your paternal name. Why not, then, discontinue the pretense and call me 'father' no more?"

He did not appear to hear, though the yellow eyes glowed. He took more wine and said, "At that moment, all I longed for was death. So I lay down and prepared for it. Only, that is not the way the world works. We are never granted what we seek most fervently. I was taken, unconscious, to the little Alpine cottage of an old Dutchman named Johannes Brinkerhoff. He thought that my face—" and here, Erik indicated his mask with a hand covered in blisters, "—was a result of exposure and injury. He had rudimentary medical knowledge, though what his object in rescuing me at that point has never been clear to me. He did not know French and his German was poor, so it was difficult for us to come to an understanding." My son glared at me, my fault because I had not taught him Dutch as a boy. "Dhr. Brinkerhoff eventually realized that my face was permanent, as soon as I learned enough Dutch to communicate. The man had saved my life, and I was grateful to him, but it became clear to me almost immediately that he was not a reputable gentleman."

"What do you mean?" I interrupted.

"He lived alone in an isolated cottage. He was afraid of his own shadow. He had quark medicines by the pound in cabinets." Erik licked his thin lips. "To my understanding, Dhr. Brinkerhoff had been a quack doctor in Rotterdam before being disgraced—my poetic imagination says he killed someone—and coming into hiding in _les Alpes." _

Erik could see that he had my attention. I had heard and seen much in Algiers, but this narrative had the quality of those penny-dreadfuls always depicting jilted lovers throwing engraving acid into men's faces. In short—I was not entirely sure I believed him. He paused, and offered me a seat opposite him once more. Slowly, I took it.

"I had not been under Dhr. Brinkerhoff's care for more than a week when he announced his intention to take me to Tyrol. He did not say in what capacity and I, being very young and foolish, was unconcerned—after all, I had been robbed of my illusions of ever attending school, so whatever ambitions this man who had saved my life might have for me, why should I fear them?

"What Dhr. Brinkerhoff had in mind, however, was a sort of traveling exhibit—similar to the fairs that come each year. I, of course, was to be the attraction. I had informed Dhr. Brinkerhoff that I was an accomplished musician, but this did not interest him." Erik leaned over the table, exposing rotted tissue under his sunken eyes. "You see, _Father, _talents are nothing compared to this face. It is a constant reminder of death, and that is both shocking and titillating to Man."

"You don't mean to say that—this man put you on display?" Why would someone expose the face I had worked so very hard to conceal? I could not imagine anyone voluntarily wanting to see something so ugly and frightening.

"That is exactly what he did," said Erik, with a distinctive tone of bitterness. "He was very much interested in recent theories of the connection between the ape and the human, and like many sideshow entrepreneurs, liked having something he could call the Missing Link. He had once owned an Ourang-Outan, you see, and though it had died, he had found it infinitely popular to audiences seeking something both man-like and bestial." His smile was completely without kindness. "What did it matter that I could speak a half-dozen languages? To Brinkerhoff's crowd, I became even more than an Ourang-Outan—something neither man nor beast, a gibbering, senseless creature."

My face must have betrayed the horror I felt, for Erik said, "Why did I not run away? I was sixteen, a strong boy, and Brinkerhoff only a frail old man. But you see, in a way I was already dead—I had died the moment my mother looked upon me with a scream. To escape meant I would be caught and killed, imprisoned, or at the very least, locked away in a madhouse. I was fed, and Brinkerhoff was teaching me many lessons I had never learnt at home."

He drank the last of his wine and poured himself another glass. I had not yet touched mine. "Around the spring of 1850, Brinkerhoff got it into his head that the best place for us was the Weltevreden in Batavia." Erik began his second glass. I was beginning to get thirsty but still unwilling to consume anything Erik offered. "Do not ask me why he came to this conclusion. The man may have been drawing too much attention to himself through me. Perhaps he worried that wherever I had come from—whoever I had come from—would come looking for me." He gave an ugly look. "He could not go back to the Low Countries; that much was certain. He dared not go to France, from whence I came—it had to be somewhere much farther away than that.

"The money he had made from me was enough for passage, and it was something he had long dreamt of, to see Batavia. In those days, Batavia was still seen as an outpost of elegance and exoticism." Erik shrugged. "I wore my mask as the boat sailed into the bay at the mouth of Ciliwring River, and the feeling was almost as it had been the first time I had seen Lyon."

He looked sharply at me, and to avoid his gaze I finally took some wine. "Dhr. Brinkerhoff was too poor for anything but transportation on foot, and the town was strung out for miles. We set up house in the old part of town, the _benedenstad, _where land was cheap—all the rich had moved to the new Batavia in the higher reaches of the city.

"Brinkerhoff may have been disappointed with the old city, but I was not in the least. He had suffered greatly on the passing—we had left from Marseilles—continually being sick. On the other hand, I was thrilled by the prospect of traveling. You recall, of course, that though music and architecture were my chief subjects as a pupil, I had also a good grasp of history."

"This is true."

"Naturally, this land of jungle and mosque was the closest I thought I would ever come to the ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or the pyramids at Giza." He winked in such a way that indicated to me he had since seen them both. "On the street in the _benedenstad_, you might see the wealthy Dutch taken by dos-à-dos, as well as the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Indians and the Arabs. The town was rich as far as languages were concerned, and I disciplined myself at once to learn Malay—the others came later." He touched his forehead as I had seen the daroga do earlier. "In fact, it was among the _Orang Betawi _I first learned Arabic."

I admit to being somewhat irritated at the cavalier manner Erik spoke of his linguistic abilities, and I snapped, "And what did you do to earn your bread while you were so busy educating yourself?"

"The _Kompenie, _as the Indonesians called the Dutch, were bored to tears in what they considered a provincial backwater. They were always in need of entertainment. Brinkerhoff made me continue my Missing Link-act, but now he allowed me to play and sing—to prove that even the most vicious half-human could be tamed and taught." He poured us both more wine. "Needless to say, we were very popular. We visited all the suburbs of the Noordwijk and Rijswijk in order to perform; special performances were given at the Harmonie Club, and in front of Waterlooplein Palace. For Chinese New Year, which lasts twelve days, we camped on Molenvliet where all the Chinese officers lived."

"It sounds as though life was . . ." I could not say "good" with that corpse-like visage watching me. ". . . not unpleasant . . ."

"Things were never the same after the malaria epidemic of late '51."

It seemed as though Erik, infinitely grandiose, had gotten smaller. "The Indonesians, of course, relied upon holy water blessed by their _imams _as protection_." _He gave a derisive sound. "Silly, isn't it, the false security religion brings us?" I was about to say something in the defense of the Gospel, but he went on: "Brinkerhoff was shaken by the epidemic. Though both of us lived, he was no longer certain he approved of the way we were living. To be more precise, he felt less sure that his worldly exploits would be looked upon with favor on the Day of Judgment. He repented of his trickery—began studying medicine in earnest again. He kept a Eurasian _nyai_—housekeeper—as his mistress. As I'm sure will not surprise you, she despised me from the very first." Erik's hand suddenly convulsed on his glass of wine, and I became alarmed he might break the glass.

"I realized very quickly that whatever understanding I had had with Brinkerhoff was being destroyed by this woman. He stopped taking me to the street for spectacles. He devoted himself entirely to her. The profits we had earned in Batavia were considerable, twice what we had earned in Tyrol, and he was able to live comfortably with only his studies and his housekeeper to occupy his time. No longer forced to be on display, I was free to wander through all the reaches of the city. I began thinking of leaving Batavia. The Indians in the Parar Baru were silk merchants, and I spent time among them, learning Hindi. When at last Brinkerhoff revealed his intentions to sell me as a slave to a rich Chinese merchant, I disappeared in the night on a boat bound for Calcutta."

Erik got abruptly to his feet, stretching and looking again toward the window. I had no idea how long I had been sitting and listening to his improbable tale. He seemed to lose himself then, opening a cabinet and asking me, "Do you care to smoke?" I could see the elaborate shape of a hookah pipe. "I don't much care for it myself, but . . . "

I shook my head firmly, and he sat down again. He cleared his throat. "What is it? Do you think that I am lying? That all I tell you now is a fabrication?" His gaze was hard and colorless.

"Well, Erik—"

"If someone had told you a baby had been born with a skull as his face, you would not have believed that either, would you have?" I looked away, uncomfortable at such a memory. "Yet you _saw _it, you were there."

He sighed. "This reason, among others, has been why I hesitate to reveal myself to anyone. It seems more natural, somehow, that a monstrosity like myself should sit in a hole its life long, rather than accomplish things and be seen places." When I said nothing, he resumed, "I no longer wanted to show my face to every passerby for money." He shuddered. "I quickly discovered I had other talents at my disposal. One of the gifts Dhr. Brinkerhoff had given me had been the lesson of ventriloquism. Snake-charming in India was common and easy. But to make a snake sing as well as dance? There were hundreds of snake-charmers in Calcutta, but only one Erik." He shrugged. "Alas, I could not settle even then. The other snake-charmers were envious of my success, of course, and it was not long before someone connected me with the Missing Link of Batavia. Demon, they called me, and threatened my life." He drank the last of his wine. "A few years earlier perhaps I would have given into such coercing, disappeared again into obscurity. But I had tasted ambition.

"I took my skills north, to the Punjab. It was there that I learned to use this—" From his sleeve he produced the coiled rope that I had just seen kill two people. I shrunk back from it, and he laughed. "Only a piece of string—but with the right application of strength, the right knowledge of anatomy . . ." He broke off and put it away. His voice was suddenly earnest, apologetic. "I only learned to use it for self-defense. But the snake-charmers of the Punjab heard talk of my demonry and were intent on driving me out." Erik looked down at his white hands, covered in yellow sores.

"There was a British outpost in Rajasthan. They sent a greenhorn in jodhpurs and a little hat—" Erik sneered "—a _boy, _to arrest me for killing men. Indian men, poor men—the British government did not care tuppence—but they were frightened of me." Erik's yellow eyes glowed like coals. "They were determined to snuff me out. So they sent a boy with a pistol after me.

"So, I had killed a soldier of Her Majesty's army. This could not be overlooked. I returned the body to the fort at Rajasthan and demanded to see the commanding officer there. Colonel Rathbone, he was called. Guns, they realized, were of little use—the English, you know how they love their bullets."

"And when did the killing stop?" I asked, my throat suddenly parched. "I am surprised you did not come out of British India in chains."

His eyes burned with disdain. "I told Colonel Rathbone that, in order to compensate the army for its loss, I would join in the soldier's place."

"Join the British Army? They would never—"

"Colonel Rathbone wanted me sent far away. He did not trust me in India, you see." Erik looked up thoughtfully. "This is September, 1856. You were in Algiers by this time, yes? You were aware of the conflict between the Shah and Her Majesty Queen Victoria, yes?"

"You mean to say you entered Persia on the side of the British?"

Erik nodded brusquely, clearly enjoying boggling my mental fibers. "Performer, assassin, musician, ventriloquist, and now soldier—from a corpse-thing that was not meant to last the day." There was a hint at a sob in his voice, and I was no longer angry. He spoke more quietly now. "For weeks, the British officers had been trying to kill me off—putting me in the thick of the Shah's personal guard. So, in the hub of the battle of Chāb Kutāh, I surrendered to the troops from Tehran and offered to fight for them."

I could not conceal a gasp of surprise. I had read about Chāb Kutāh in the newspaper, a particularly bloody battle, the final battle for the British before they were routed. I could scarcely fathom the arrogance of my son to turn traitor at such a time. "The Persians—they allowed you into _their _army?"

"They had their suspicions. Once they tore the mask off, however, someone recognized me from Batavia. I remained in the custody of Amir al-Omarā Mirzā Mohammed Khān-e Qājār's through March.

"As you know, the Peace Treaty was ratified that month. The English left their base in Bushrehr, and I was free to go, also. However, as proof of my good intentions—" he sneered, "—I helped round up the rabble of Dashti, who had been dealing under the table with the English squatters.

"My other talents, too, amused Qājār, and he had great need of me in August when the plague broke out. Cholera, this time," he said wistfully. "I saved a great number of Persians from Shirāz and Fārs, and all they could do was spit in my face." Erik's hand convulsed around his empty glass. "Then there was the matter of the escape of Nasrollāh Khān-e Lāri."

"Who?"

"I forget, all these Persian names must sound unfamiliar," he mocked. "Forgive me. The former governor of Lārestān, imprisoned in Shirāz. He escaped and declared himself governor of the Sāba. Naturally, he was subdued."

"By the Punjab lasso?"

"In fact, no." But he refused to elaborate. "For the part I played in these affairs, Abd ul-Bāqui Mirzā—a personal favorite of the Shah's—took me to court for the New Year, which occurred, as you may remember, on March 21st. The Shah was well-pleased with my talents—"

"And the sultana too?"

"Why do you say that?" I said nothing. "Do not tell me that you insinuate—" He shook his head, as if the very idea made him ill. He resumed, "—it was I who suggested to him the telegraph that so fascinated you."

"And you have lived at court ever since."

"Yes."

"And when did you begin killing for sport—not even your own sport, but the Shah's?"

"Father," he said in the tone with which one speaks to a baby, "who are you, really, to speak of killing? And to answer your question, I had had in my mind the plan for my torture chamber for some time. In fact, I believe it first formed when I was twelve." His glance was cut glass. I remembered at once the fever of architecture he had pursued at that age. I shivered to think of it.

"Of course, I do more than design torture chambers—I have plans for a new palace for the Shah—would you like to see them?"

I got to my feet. "No, thank you."

"You should reconsider. It is quite beautiful. The Shah has commissioned it."

"Are you happy at this court?" At this time I did not shirk to use such a word.

"Happy?" he repeated incredulously. "Well, I suppose I am."

"Do you trust this Shah?"

Erik paused. "No. But I have not trusted many in over twenty years."

I bowed my head. Why should I warn him? He had made his life a merchandise in killing. He was wrong, he was morally corrupt, he was—one could say, and with some justification, that had it not been for me, had it not been for my cowardly abandonment of him upon the wastes of the mountains, he would not have learned the harsh gaze of thousands of spectators—perhaps he never would have learned to use the Punjab lasso—or have had need of it.

Erik was determined to live. Even if it was an immoral life. "You may feel secure at court, but let me caution you. Whatever you do for the Shah, whatever services you provide for him, know that he will tire of you. Who is to say he will not put you in your own torture chamber when it best suits him?"

He laughed dryly. "That is why it is useful to have the partnership of the daroga of Mazenderan."

I looked at Erik, his painful thinness, the sores on his hands, the thin, colorless hair above his mask. "Does he know I'm your father?"

"Of course not. The daroga, like many at court, is convinced that I must be as perverted as my face suggests. Regular, private visits by a man seem to him quite normal." I grew very white, unable to ask the unthinkable. "It isn't true, of course." Erik went through the cabinet again. "Would you like some coffee? It's nearly three o'clock, you know."

I wasn't certain I could bear any more. The shocks of the last few days were catching me, rapidly—to see him alive, to see what he had become—to see him murder two men— I was edging closer to the door, feeling deeper into the night than I had ever been before I had spoke to Erik. He was watching me again with the alertness for a lion. I was unsure how to leave gracefully.

"You disappoint me. I thought, for all this knowledge I have given you—to which no other person on Earth can lay claim—you might at least have words for me."

"Words of comfort?" I asked, stricken.

He cleared his throat. "Perhaps not."

I tried to speak. "I recognize the honor you do me—though I cannot condone what you have—and despite all of this, I can—"

"This parting does not become either of us," he said, his voice neutral. "You are leaving in two days, yes?" I nodded. "Come again tomorrow, and we may be able to say without regret, goodbye—for good." I wanted to argue with him, to get out of his presence and not come back. But I found myself agreeing before I shut the door.

In coming back at last to see my son for the last time, I wondered if ever a father had felt so strangely as I did. Erik was a sin, an abomination, a murderer—and his life was full of pain. I was his father—and he had lived, if only to remind me of that, and to refuse me the sin of killing him.

Remembering what he had said, I knocked loudly. This time, there was no response. I knocked again. Something hard hit me on the side of the head.

The first thing I was aware of was the uncomfortable heat. Sitting up, I almost unconsciously unbuttoned my collar. Opening my eyes, I was treated to the blearing light of a tropical jungle. My mind was hazy, and I wondered how I had left the Shah's palace for a tropical forest in Batavia or . . .

When my hands touched upon the green tile underfoot, I realized that I was inside the hexagonal torture chamber. My stomach dropped, and my eyes focused in and out on the mirrors dancing before my eyes.

What had happened? I wondered, remaining seated where I was, closing my eyes against the tricks of the light. I had been at Erik's door, and . . . "Monsieur Lucas, please do not grimace in such an appalling manner; you quite frighten my sultana." It was the Shah's unmistakable French, and, looking up, I could see the window through which I myself had peered the day before. The Shah was there, the execrable sultana also, and Erik. But Erik did not look at me. His eyes were closed behind the mask.

"Such an honor, Monsieur Lucas," the damned Persian went on. "You are the first Westerner to be invited to my torture chamber."

I got to my feet, clinging to the metallic tree in order to keep my balance as I grew more and more nauseous. "It seems that Erik carries a personal grudge against you, and it was my pleasure to grant him this spectacle." The Shah's voice was high and mocking. I remembered very clearly the feeling of Erik's hands around my throat when he was sixteen years old, when he had tried to kill me. Something had stayed him then, something missing now. Here was his revenge.

I stared into the window (though the glare hurt my eyes) and shouted every obscenity I could—in Arabic and French—at the Shah and Erik. I realized halfway through that there was no way they could hear me, but I kept on shouting, screaming, as tears poured out of the edges of my eyes and dried on my red, hot cheeks.

I collapsed then, feeling very overheated and thirsty. Despite my exhaustion, the voice that pleaded with me to sleep, I resolved that I would not die this way. There must be some way to escape. I crawled on hands and knees, searching for a release lever or—I knew not what. Soon the glass was too hot to touch with bare hands, so I removed my coat and covered my hands like mittens.

…

It was too hot, and I was too thirsty to go on. I had no idea how long I had been trapped; I was even then beginning to lose my senses. The lush forest had become a desert, like those on the hills of Algiers, and my eyes kept picking out mirages of waterfalls on the glass. I sat in quiet, closing my eyes and breathing as slowly as I could manage.

…

I opened my eyes to the tile of the revolving floor, seeing beside me the black boot that encased a long and narrow foot. I gazed my tired eyes upward to see the familiar spindly frame in mask and cloak. In black gloves it held a braided noose.

"Erik," I croaked from my dry throat, standing and bracing myself against the metal tree. "Erik, you cannot do this." I stood, the sweat soaking my hair and running through my eyes like tears. "You cannot do this to your father." My clothes were damp with sweat. My tongue stung with salt. "Your father," I panted. "Do you remember what it is to feel? Do you remember the child you once were? What would your mother think, Erik?" My eyes filled with tears, and I wept, though I could not afford the loss of fluid. "Please. Do not consign yourself to the realm of monster. Your face is not an excuse!"

He had so far hesitated. "Finish him!" I heard the Shah say in Arabic.

I pushed back from the tree, standing on my own feet. Everything swayed through my sweat. I tasted blood on my lips. "Erik, your father . . ." I repeated. Erik moved backward, elegantly, and against my throat I felt a tight pressure before I saw darkness.

I was certain I was dead when I woke in darkness and cold. To wake? How did I know I was not dreaming? Such blackness! Was this Hell—? Such dark! I could see nothing.

"Are you awake?" It was Erik's voice, low and quiet. I felt him press a hand against the small of my back.

"_C'est toi? En enfer_?" I whispered, having lost my voice.

"Silence!" he snapped. I tried to get to my feet, but I fell, head swimming with pain.

"Where are we?" I asked, now wondering if perhaps I had not died after all.

"Shut up and drink this." He shoved a cup of water against my lips. I drank gratefully. "And this," he said, pressing on my swollen tongue a foul-tasting, runny paste.

"Where are we?" I repeated.

"Below the torture chamber," he said, in a voice feathery and anxious. "Can you walk?"

I wrenched myself up. "What are you doing? Why am I not dead?"

"Shut _up, _you fool!" he raged, removing from my neck the lasso, my last lucid memory. "Now, can you walk?"

In his impatience, he seized my hand. I pulled away in revulsion at the cold piece of heavy flesh. He seized my wrist with a vice-like grip and pulled me. We moved silently in the dark. Once he stopped to make me drink again. As reason slowly came back to me, I realized that the Punjab lasso had indeed struck—but not fatally.

Erik stopped and lifted something. A shaft of light led upwards. "You know how to play dead, don't you?" he asked, before grabbing me and hoisting me into his arms. Somehow I was unsurprised that he was able to carry me with almost no difficulty. I feigned death as he had suggested; we ascended, and I felt warmth again upon my skin. We descended once more, and eventually I heard his chest rumble, "Stand up now."

I did so, blinking in the twilight of a back alley of Tehran. I turned around saw Gulistãn, whitely gleaming, behind me. "Eat this," Erik said, handing me coarse bread and some dates. The smell aroused me to my hunger. Meanwhile, wrapped tightly in his cloak, Erik spoke in rapid Arabic to a man with a donkey. Money passed hands; I did not see how much. Dumbfounded, I realized Erik had spared my life a second time—as I had done to him.

"Come here, sir," said the man with the donkey, motioning to me.

"One moment," I told him.

Erik paced back and forth, yet I could not tell if it was anger or anxiety. "He will find out. Erik," I said, "you had better be on your guard."

He ignored me. He removed his cloak suddenly. "Take off your coat," he said brusquely. I did as I was told. "And your shoes." I watched him warily. He removed his own boots and gave them to me. I started to laugh at the absurdity, but he grabbed my coat from me. The light black material he had been wrapping himself in he tore off, draping it across me. He replaced his cloak about himself, but not before I had seen that he had barely enough skin on his body to stretch over his bones. His throat was covered in yellow sores as well, worse than they had been when he had been a boy. He folded my coat up. "A souvenir to show the Shah."

His eyes looked misty, but I wasn't sure if there were actual tears there. I looked away. "Do not go back to Algiers," he said suddenly, with menace. "And never come back to Persia."

I nodded. "Where will this man take me?" The man was speaking in low Arabic to the donkey.

"Better not to say now," he panted. "Ask him on the way."

"Erik . . ."

"Do you not wish now that I had died in the beginning?" he asked suddenly.

"Do you?" For the first time, I wondered if, despite it all, Erik still . . . loved me. I knew he still loved his mother, though her rejection had hurt him. Did I love him? I could hardly tell in this moment, when he had just nearly killed me and then saved my life.

He shrugged. "I don't . . . know."

"Thank you," I said finally.

He said nothing.

The man with the donkey, I found out, was taking me to Istãnbul.


End file.
